cuckoo part two

Friday night: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at Portland Center Stage. So great to go with Holly, fellow writer and big Kesey fan, and be able to talk all kinds of Kesey, including her wonderful experience on one occasion of the man's birthday.

Review without spoilers: go see it.

Review with some spoilers...

First off, the set was great and used very effectively. The day room presided over by Nurse Ratched behind glass in her cubicle like a control booth in some spaceship was oppressive and claustrophobic, but the hallway leading back into the rest of the institution - that was even more oppressive. Our seats were over on the right, so I couldn't see the end of that hall, but even so - that is a dangerous corridor. Feels iconic, like the entrance to hell.

Nurse Ratched's little glassed-in room: again, really effective. It has that feel of the royal box at the Roman games, where the king pronounces thumbs-up or thumbs-down. And the control panel studded with lights in the background - a line of lights fade on and off, on and off, like the machine is breathing. A wonderful reference to Chief Bromden's "Combine."

More great stuff with light: the hanging institutional lights contrasting with the pattern of sunlight (freedom) angling down to the floor from the window to the outside.

I loved the opening. First of all, you hear a bit of the "one flew east, one flew west," rhyme, and I swear that's Kesey's voice, there. If it's not, it sure sounds like him.

Of course, the book is told from the Chief's point of view, and you can't help but expect to miss that when you see it on stage. Wasserman's script finds a way to pay homage to that part of the story, and to give voice to Chief's "Combine" ideas, among other things, with the short passages the Chief recites as if speaking to his father. The best use of this is in the opening. Chief standing in the pattern of sunlight on the floor and looking out at freedom, talking to his father, his voice "big" the way he will be "big" at the end of the story - and then he finishes what he has to say and his head droops and all that "big" and all that freedom is gone.

Just great.

I have to say, by the third or fourth time, this felt device-y and I worried that it would start to annoy me. Then it stopped. In a place where it made sense for it to stop, felt right that it would stop, because of how the character and the story had changed.

The production felt really well balanced to me between funny and devastating. I laughed a lot. I was shocked at particular moments. Sometimes it's great to have a bad memory. I forgot a couple of key moments in the plot, and when they happened, they grabbed me hard.

I thought the cast did a wonderful job. Particularly Ryan Tresser playing Billy Bibbit with pitch-perfect innocence and a beautiful stammer. When Billy tells a story about himself stuttering, that stutter sounds appropriately faked, and when he speaks normally, that stutter sounds authentic.



Here are the two biggies. I thought both PJ Sosko as McMurphy and Gretchen Corbett as Ratched were very good.


And Stephen Caffrey as Harding was just the right amount of what he needed to be. The right amount of self-confidence, the right amount of fear, the right amount of priss.


Ooh, and again: that thing about how nice it is at times to have a bad memory. I didn't remember this scene happening the same way in the book. Wasn't it different in the book? I don't know, but what happens in the World Series scene and how it was executed in this production was some lovely magic.


PCS always does Kesey proud. I loved their Sometimes a Great Notion and thought this was great too. It's playing through the end of March.

cuckoo part one

Excited to be seeing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest tonight at Portland Center Stage. This morning, I took a look back in the old journal to see if I had said anything particular about the book when I read it (on audio, read by Kesey himself) back in o-eight, and found that I'd finished the last bit of it standing under the back awning of Portland Center Stage's Armory theater in the rain.

I did a window display at Powell's to promote both the play and the book, and also the shirt we carry that has the book cover reproduced on it.

Couple of photos...




The look comes from the promo poster PCS created for the production.

Review to come.

marching

Recently, I was part of a podcast in a cool, wacky series called The Last Film I Saw, produced by writer/filmmaker Brian Padian of Northern Flicker Films.

You can check it out here.

I was the special guest and for a few moments I talked about the last film I saw. What I thought was really interesting was that he didn't ask me to analyze the film. He asked me why I watched it.

I was excited to truly have a why for this movie. However inarticulately I might have talked about it, I had a pretty strong why. The film was Gold Diggers of 1933. It's a crazy movie - part big Busby Berkeley dance spectacle, part crackpot comedy, part tear your heart out. I'm not sure these different parts all fit together, but I don't care. It's part of what I love about it.

Another thing I love about it is that, as I mentioned in the podcast, it's about the Depression and it was made during the Depression. All the screwball comedy, the sparkly musical production numbers - they're about this very serious, very scary time in American history. Which was going on at the time.















The film opens with Ginger Rogers singing We're In the Money in pig latin. How weird is that? And scores of dancing girls dressed in giant coins. Singing, "You'll never see a headline / About a breadline today." What must audiences have thought, having passed breadlines to get to the theater and watch girls dance under towers of giant money? It's a triumphant declaration of the awful irony of it all. Plus pig latin.

My why was that I was afraid of losing my job and afraid for friends losing their jobs during a big layoff at work. Which of course was happening partly because of the recession we're in - which we call a recession, only a recession, but I'm sure the word depression felt innocuous enough before people had lived in it long enough.

It was the first day of the layoffs, and I'd spent all day in such worry that by the end of it, I came home and was too mind-exhausted to write or do much of anything. There was something about the strange combination of real and unreal of that film that made it the perfect escape that night. That stylized reality of 1930s films, the artifice of the stage, and the Depression right there in the middle of it all. During the podcast, I told Brian I might have to watch it again. The layoff process was not finished, and I wasn't sure if I'd be watching the film in celebration or defeat, but I figured I'd be watching it again.

It took a week but I finally knew neither Stephen nor I were losing our jobs. That night it was me again in front of the TV, Ginger Rogers in extreme closeup--that one crooked tooth--singing E're-way in-ay the oney-may.

The other reason I watched it a second time is that, the first time, I'd had to stop the movie before the end of the final musical number, to go pick Stephen up. And that's my favorite part, that number. After a whole lot of plot kookiness, here comes this surprise heart-wrenching anthem:

Remember my forgotten man.

You put a rifle in his hand.

You sent him far away,

You shouted: Hip-hooray!

But look at him today.



It's really an amazing number. Again, the artifice of the stage and of 1930s Hollywood, but a heavy truth at the bottom of it all. This was how America was feeling at that time. Betrayed. And they put it on the screen in this triumphant tableau.

Somewhere mid-point in the film when play producer Barney Hopkins (who is putting on a musical about the Depression during the Depression - in this movie made during the Depression) hears the music for the song for the first time, he's transfixed by the sound and the rhythm alone: "Men marching! Marching in the rain!" he shouts over the piano. "Marching, marching! Doughnuts and crullers! Jobs, jobs, marching, marching, marching in the rain..."

Brian Padian describes his The Last Film I Saw Podcast as:

A weekly and/or biweekly investigation of cinematic undertaking w/a minimum of fancy-pants language.

You can check them all out here.

family fun

I love stories about wacky families. One of my February window displays celebrates these stories, including one of the wackiest of all, Jessica Anya Blau's Drinking Closer to Home. For the rest, I asked friends at Powell's what their favorites were. But there've got to be a million great stories about family dysfunction or kookiness out there. Anyone want to add a favorite?

First, the poor quality, full-of-glare window picture:



And the image by itself.

cupid

And here is the image from the Valentine's Day card Stephen made for me:



The French translates to something like, from your slightly childish husband. Wait, does it mean childish or childlike? Whatever it is, he makes an adorable cupid...

empress

Post-Valentine's Day show-off time. This'll have to come in two parts since Stephen's still sleeping and I wouldn't go into his computer files to get his. My card to him references one of his pet artists, Franz Winterhalter. This is Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting (1855). We have a print of it on our bedroom wall.



I figured Stephen could be the Empress and I could be all his ladies in waiting. I did some cropping and moved a few of the ladies over to keep all those little faces as large as I could on the card. Even with all that, there were a couple faces I had to leave just a tad too large because with Photopaint I lost too much of the quality in the shrinking. And of course, having to scour pictures for the perfect expressions of adoration at the right angles (to at least make it look like all the ladies are gazing in Stephen's direction, even though, really, most of them probably aren't), I had some that fit better than others. Some that I couldn't get bright enough without losing quality. The Empress Eugénie has a pretty good farmer's tan going there.

week

Weeks don't usually come this full.

Standing in a huge group of people at Winston Wächter Gallery, glass of champagne in hand, listening to Stephen speak about his art, with his paintings on the wall behind.

On-the-clock / off-the-clock dread at work, waiting to find out if Stephen or I will be one of the ones laid off.

Good friends losing their jobs.

Noni in the hospital with pneumonia, fear but then favorable reports from home of how she's doing.

Learning wonderful secrets from friends.

On-the-clock / off-the-clock dread, waiting to find out if Stephen or I will be one of the ones bumped by one of the ones laid off.

[in my head, i keep thinking "bumped off" which is kind of fun because it makes me feel like i'm in a gangster movie.]

Arriving at Dangerous Writing to find a thick stack of completed manuscript in the middle of Tom's table, ready to be sent off to his agent. A book we in the workshop have been privileged to watch come to life over these past couple years. Tom says, touch it for good luck. Later, Tom says, kiss it with your red lipstick. I kiss right at the edge of his name on that top page. Then one by one, first the women, then the men, pinking their lips, covering the page with color.

Learning unhappy secrets from friends.

A night of amazing pages, then I read last. The very final chapter of the second draft of the novel. Hoping Stephen arrives in time to sit in but he doesn't. But Sage is there - lovely surprise. Finish reading, and Tom starts clapping, then it's a full-out standing ovation around the room. I want to fly and I want to hide under the table. Stephen doesn't arrive until just as it's over, but I say, "Ladies and gentlemen: Michael," and they applaud him too. I tell him to get some lipstick on.

We all agree Charles looks pretty damn good in that shade of red.

Blue Monk later, drinks all around, hanging out and talking writing and other things. Taffy and She-Yeti don't make it, but Carrie does, even with a marathon reading of Moby Dick ahead of her. A toast to Charles for creating my website. Emily and I conspire to get champagne to toast Tom and his book, but I get waylaid in a conversation. Suddenly here's Emily with lots of glasses with a bit of champagne in each, passed around, a toast to Tom and to me--I feel privileged to have my toast folded up with his. Lovely night with so many of the very important people in my life.

Top it off with an evening with a couple more of those people (the very important kind), amazing, enriching conversation, the kind where you feel like you must be the dumb one in the room, the bar is so high, and talking some of our favorite topics. Delicious dinner and a surprise recording session to be part of a very cool podcast series.

This isn't even a week, it's five days. Who would have thought the biggest part of our week would not be Turandot?